LETTER XXII.

TO J. D. ESQ., M. P.

This creature is deep in the metaphysics of love. She is perpetually awakening ardour by restraint, and stealing enjoyment from privation. She still persists in bringing the priest with her to the drawing-desk; but it is evident she does not the less enjoy that casual absence which leaves us sometimes alone; and I am now become such an epicure in sentiment, that I scarcely regret the restraint the presence of the priest imposes; since it gives a keener zest to the transient minutes of felicity his absence bestows--even though they are enjoyed in silent confusion. For nothing can be more seducing than her looks, nothing can be more dignified than her manners. If, when we are alone, I even offer to take her hand, she grows pale, and shrinks from my touch. Yet I regret not that careless confidence which once prompted the innocent request that I would guide her hand to draw a perpendicular line.

*****

“Solitude (says the Spectator) with the person beloved, even to a woman’s mind, has a pleasure beyond all the pomp and splendour in the world.”

O! how my heart subscribes to a sentiment I have so often laughed at, when my ideas of pleasure were very different from what they are at present. I cannot persuade myself that three weeks have elapsed since my return hither; and still less am I willing to believe that it is necessary I should return to M-------- house. In short, the rocks which embosom the peninsula of Inis-more bound all my hopes, all my wishes; and my desires, like the _radii of a circle_, all point towards one and the same centre. This creature grows on me with boundless influence; her originality, her genius, her sensibility, her youth, and person! In short, her united charms in this profound solitude thus closely associated, is a species of witchcraft.

*****

It was indispensibly necessary I should return to M------house, as my father’s visit to Ireland is drawing near; and it was requisite I should receive and answer his letters. At last, therefore, I summoned up resolution to plead my former excuses to the Prince for my absence; who insisted on my immediate return--which I promised should be in a day or two--while the eyes of Glorvina echoed her father’s commands, and mine looked implicit obedience. With what different emotions I now left Inismore, to those which accompanied my last departure! My feelings were then unknown to myself--now I am perfectly aware of their nature.

I found M-------- house, as usual, cold, comfortless, and desolate--with a few wretched-looking peasants working languidly about the grounds. In short, everything breathed the deserted mansion of an _absentee_.

The evening of my arrival I answered my father’s letters--one from our pleasant but libertine friend D------n,--read over yours three times--went to bed--dreamed of Glorvina--and set off for Inismore the next morning. I rode so hard that I reached the castle about that hour which we usually devoted to the exertions of the pencil. I flew at once to that vast and gloomy room which her presence alone cheers and illumines. Her drawing-desk lay open; she seemed but just to have risen from the chair placed before it; and her work-basket hung on its back.

Even this well-known little work-basket is to me an object of interest. I kissed the muslin it contained; and, in raising it, perceived a small book splendidly bound and gilt. I took it up, and read on its cover, marked in letters of gold, “_Brevaire du Sentiment_.”

Impelled by the curiosity which this title excited, I opened it--and found beneath its first two leaves several faded snowdrops _stained with blood_. Under them was written in Glorvina’s hand,

“Prone to the earth he bowed our pallid flowers--

And caught the drops divine, the purple dyes

Tinging the lustre of our native hues.”

A little lower in the page was traced, “Culled from the spot where he fell--April the 1st, 17--

Oh! how quickly my bounding heart told me who was that _he_, whose vital drops had stained these _treasured_ blossoms, thus “tinging the lustre of their native hues.” While the sweetest association of ideas convinced me that these were the identical flowers which Glorvina had hallowed with a tear as she watched by the couch of him with whose blood they were polluted.

While I pressed this sweet testimony of a pure and lively tenderness to my lips, she entered. At sight of _me_, pleasurable surprise invested every feature; and the most innocent joy lit up her countenance, as she sprang forward and offered me her hand. While I carried it eagerly to my lips, I pointed to the snowdrops. Glorvina, with the hand which was disengaged, covered her blushing face, and would have fled. But the look which preceded this natural motion discovered the wounded feelings of a tender but proud heart. I felt the indelicacy of my conduct, and, still clasping her struggling hand, exclaimed--

“Forgive, forgive the vain triumph of a being intoxicated by your pity<--transported by your condescension.”

“_Triumph!_” repeated Glorvina, in an accent tenderly reproachful, yet accompanied by a look proudly indignant--“_Triumph!_”

How I cursed the coxcomical expression in my heart, while I fell at her feet, and kissing the hem of her robe, without daring to touch the hand I had relinquished, said, “Does this look like triumph, Glorvina?” Glorvina turned towards me a face in which all the witcheries of her sex were blended--playful fondness, affected anger, animated tenderness, and soul-dissolving languishment. Oh! she should not have looked thus, or I should have been more or less than man.

With a glance of undeniable supplication, she released herself from that glowing fold, which could have pressed her forever to a heart where she must forever reign unrivalled. I saw she wished I should think her very angry, and another pardon was to be solicited, for the transient indulgence of that passionate impulse her own seducing looks had called into existence. The pardon, after some little pouting playfulness, _was_ granted, and I was suffered to lead her to that Gothic sofa where our first _tete-a-tete_ had taken place; and partly by artifice, partly by entreaty, I drew from her the little history of the treasured snow-drops, and read from her eloquent eyes more than her bashful lip would dare to express.

Thus, like the _assymtotes_ of a hyperbola, without absolutely rushing into contact, we are, by a sweet impulsion, gradually approximating closer and closer towards each other.

Ah! my dear friend, this is the golden age of love; and I sometimes think, with the refined Weiland, in certain degree, with the first kiss--mine, therefore, is now in its climacteric.

The impetuosity with which I rush on every subject that touches her, often frustrates the intention with which I sit down to address you. I left this letter behind me unfinished, for the purpose of filling it up, on my return, with answers to those I expected to receive from you. The arguments which your friendly foresight and prudent solicitude have furnished you, are precisely such as the understanding cannot refute, nor the heart subscribe to.

You say my _wife_ she _cannot_ be--and my mistress! perish the thought! What! I repay the generosity of the father by the destruction of the child! I steal this angelic being from the peaceful security of her native shades, with all her ardent, tender feelings thick upon her: I,

‘“Crop this fair rose, and rifle all its sweetness!”

No; you do me but common justice when you say, that though you have sometimes known me _affect_ the character of a libertine, yet never, even for a moment, have you known me forfeit that of a man of honour. I would not be understood to speak in the mere commonplace worldly acceptation of the word, but literally, according to the text of moral and divine laws.

“Then, what,” you ask me, “is the aim, the object, in pursuing this _ignus fatuus_ of the heart and fancy?”

In a word, then, virtue is my object--felicity my aim; or, rather, I am lured towards the former through the medium of the latter. And whether the tie which binds me at once to moral and physical good, is a fragile texture and transient existence, or whether it will become “close twisted with the fibres of the heart, and breaking break it,” time only can determine--to time, therefore, I commit my fate; but while thus led by the hand of virtue, I inebriate at the living spring of bliss;

“While reeling through a wilderness of joy,” can you wonder that I fling off the goading chain of prudence, and, in daring to be _free_, at once be virtuous and happy.

My father’s letter is brief, but pithy. My brother is married, and has sold his name and _title_ for a hundred thousand pounds; and _his_ brother has a chance of selling his happiness forever for something about the same sum. And who think you, is to be the purchaser? Why our old sporting friend D--------. In my last grousing visit at his seat, you may remember the _pert_ little girl, his only daughter, who, he assured us, was that day _unkennelled_ for the first time, in honour of our success, and who rushed upon us from the nursery in all the bloom of fifteen, and all the boldness of a hoyden; whose society was the house-keeper, and the chamber-maid, whose ideas of pleasure extended no farther than a blind-man’s-buff in the servant’s hall, and a game of hot cockles with the butler and footman in the pantry. I had the good fortune to touch her heart at cross-purposes, and completely vanquished her affection by a romping match in the morning; and so it seems the fair _susceptible_ has pined in thought ever since, but not “let concealment prey on her damask cheek,” for she told her love to an old maiden aunt, who told it to another confidential friend, until the whole neighbourhood was full of the tale of the _victim of constancy_ and the _fatal deceiver_.

The father, as is usual in such cases, was the last to hear it; and believing me to be an excellent shot, and a keen sportsman, all he requires in a son-in-law, except a good family, he proposed the match to my father, who gladly embraced the offer, and fills his letters with blossoms, blushes, and unsophisticated charms; congratulates me on my conquest, and talks either of recalling me shortly to England, or bringing the fair _fifteen_ and old _Nimrod_ to Ireland on a visit with him. But the former he will not easily effect, and the latter I know business will prevent for some weeks, as he writes that he is still up to his ears in parchment deeds, leases, settlements, jointures. Mean time,

“Song, beauty, youth, love, virtue, joy, this group

Of bright ideas, flowers of Paradise as yet unforfeit,”

crown my golden hours of bliss; and whatever may be my destiny, I will at least rescue one beam of unalloyed felicity from its impending clouds--for, oh! my good friend, there is a prophetic something which incessantly whispers me, that in clouds and storms will the evening of my existence expire.

Adieu, H. M.